Autosprint has become the latest publication to produce a list of the ‘top ten F1 drivers ever’.

BBC did the same thing last year and I have a Top 100 F1 Drivers book on my shelf as well so it occured to me a forum thread collecting them all together would be fun, and provide a space for any other ones that appear in future or some more we can dig up from the pas. Here goes:

To be clear, this is a thread for top ten driver lists produced by different publications, not for people to suggest their own, or it will quickly become swamped. I’m particularly interested to see submissions from different countries and different points in time.

Wow. I love that Autosprint list. That’s the closest list I’ve seen published to my personal Top 10. JYS is ranked a bit too high there for my liking, but the rest of the list is pretty much spot-on for me.

I’ve given my thoughts on the BBC list in the dedicated thread, so won’t go into detail here.

Alan Henry’s list is a very interesting take, as we see a lot of the pre-modern-era drivers on the list. But I do wonder how it can be an F1 list if people like Rosemeyer and Nuvolari (who raced GPs but never got to race in F1) are on it. Not sure I agree with Moss at #1, either – never mind Schumacher’s absence.

@keithcollantine F1 Racing commissioned a vote for the Top 100 F1 drivers twice in its history (1997 and 2007, IIRC). That would be a great addition to the lists you’ve featured here.

Seeing Alan Henry’s top ten, whom I don’t know much about, the first thought came to me is, one would sell more books by making a crazy list rather than one seems plausible to any F1 fan. As you see in the related story, the first thing F1 Fanatic editor said about the book is “Some guy made a top 100 list and Michael is not in the top ten!” But of course this is just an impression as I don’t know his reasons. It may well be a work that breaks the routine with strong arguments.

I have the Top 100 that was published by F1 Racing in 1997. The editors of the magazine as well as many experienced journalists, famous F1 drivers and team principals had participated in the survey. Here’s the top 10:

The rest of the top 100 is even more interesting. It’s noteworthy that the whole list included 13 of the active drivers and some of the positions now make me think that current drivers probably shouldn’t be included in similar lists today:

I think of all those top tens, the SPEED list is probably closest to the one I would personally pick. Jim Clark might be bumped down a couple of spots, but other than that it’s pretty good. I’m not sure I like that Autosprint list – Stewart over Senna? Vettel over Alonso? Nah…

@the_sigman Yeah, after all the legends of the 80s retired and Senna was killed, Michael was kinda seen as “the last one of the great old ones” at that time. “Williams / Mclaren is the best car, Schumacher is the best driver” was a common quote from Murray Walker in the late 90s.